The effect of physician characteristics on compliance with adult preventive care guidelines.
OBJECTIVE
This study identified physician characteristics and attitudes related to self-reported compliance with adult prevention guidelines.


METHODS
A questionnaire was mailed to family practice and internal medicine residents and faculty at the University of Iowa (n = 209). The questionnaire's 78 items fell into seven categories, including physician demographics, history-taking practices, counseling practices, self-perceived effectiveness in changing patient behavior, beliefs about preventive care, knowledge about preventive care, and perceived barriers to the delivery of preventive care.


RESULTS
Compliance with history-taking recommendations was independently associated with high knowledge scores, female physician gender, and high self-perceived effectiveness in changing patient behavior. The only factor that was independently associated with counseling efforts was self-perceived effectiveness in changing patient behavior.


CONCLUSIONS
Factors that were independently associated with self-reported preventive care efforts include female physician gender, knowledge about preventive care guidelines, and perceived effectiveness in changing patient behavior. After controlling for these factors, other variables such as lack of time, lack of reminder systems, attitudes about preventive care, and amount of formal preventive care education were not related to self-reported compliance with counseling and history-taking recommendations.
Ely
J W
JW
Department of Family Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA. john-ely@uiowa.edu
Goerdt
C J
CJ
Bergus
G R
GR
West
C P
CP
Dawson
J D
JD
Doebbeling
B N
BN
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003376:Counseling; D005260:Female; D019983:Guideline Adherence; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006785:Hospitals, University; D006801:Humans; D007484:Iowa; D008297:Male; D008487:Medical History Taking; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000639:trends; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000639:trends; D011315:Preventive Medicine / Q000592:standards*